Page 45 of Deadly Business

Lies.

Lies.

Oatmeal raisin cookies never lied. Actually, they lied sometimes. When they impersonated, chocolate chip cookies. Whenever my aunt brought a tray of cookies to a gathering, she’d always put two beside each other and you had to be careful that you didn’t grab an oatmeal raisin by mistake.

So oatmeal raisin sometimes lied, but double fudge chocolate chip never lied.

Enough with the cookie debates. Focus, Hazel.

At first glance, I saw no way for me to escape the bathroom, but as I turned in a circle, hoping for an exit plan, I spotted it. A small window sat right above the toilet. The same farm animal curtains from the kitchen covered the window. The previous owner had to have gotten a bulk discount on fabric.

I stood on the seat of the toilet and reached up for the window. It unlocked and then opened with ease. Someone never painted this one with the same globby strokes they had used in the bedroom. Once I had the window high enough for my body to fit though I shimmied myself into the opening, pulled the rest of my body through, and fell in a heap on the grass in the backyard.

“Shit,” I whispered to myself, brushing off the pieces of grass stuck to the sweats from my uncoordinated tumble.

I had nowhere to go and no idea who was safe and who wasn’t, but I couldn’t stay in that house any longer. It was time for me to make my second escape and go back on the run. I’d survived—so far—and I’d do it again.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” sang a deep chilling voice.

CHAPTER20

CORBIN

Ileaned against the door sighing. I had to tell Hazel about the images eventually, but hadn’t come up with a good way how yet.

“Hazel?” I leaned closer to the door wanting to hear better.

The room remained quiet until it didn’t. A soft thud I barely heard made me perk up.

“Hazel?”

Why didn’t she respond?

After seeing the images on the thumb drive and the pure debauchery the head of Hazel’s company considered enjoyment, I’d never let her near any of them ever again.

Picture after picture of naked women, their eyes closed, while Jack used their bodies. No way any of it was consensual.

How the pictures came to be and how Sean ended up with them was still a mystery, but they would do enough damage to put the world on its head for a few days.

“Babe?” I called through the door again, my irritation rising. Was she ignoring me?

I didn’t care what the Grandmaster said. Those pictures were damaging. And if the Chicago mob was involved, it went deep. Possibly an entire sex trafficking ring. And worse because the last picture I clicked on—the first in a group all titled the same—were horrifyingly different from the rest. Rather than women being used for sexual gratification, it was one lone woman, her prone body laying by itself in a field. I had no question about her status.

She’d been dead.

The pictures proved All American Bank and their CEO were in deep. After seeing the images, I no longer wondered if the company leader could murder Hazel. What was one more murder to cover up the first?

I knocked on the bathroom door again.

It wasn’t like Hazel to ignore me, at least not without a comeback telling me to leave her alone. The longer we were together, the feistier she became, and I loved every moment.

“Babe, if you don’t say something in the next two seconds, I’m coming in there.” Fuck privacy. This situation was too dire to worry about upsetting her.

I twisted the handle as I counted and found the door locked. Adrenaline flooded my system when Hazel didn’t cry out for me to step away from the door. I tested it with my foot, put it right next to the lock, and then kicked it as hard as possible. The door splintered and shot open, revealing an empty bathroom.

A chilly summer wind fluttered in through a window above the toilet.

Fuck!

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